A problem associated with the generation on a display screen of images having edges aligned other than vertically and/or horizontally is the effect of aliasing. That is, a diagonal edge will appear to exhibit a number of discrete jumps or "stairsteps" instead of a straight line. An aliased image is generally considered to be unsatisfactory. The size and number of the jumps is a function of the resolution of the display, that is, on the number of pels per unit area. As the resolution of the display increases the effect of aliasing is made less noticeable. However, high resolution displays are generally costly and their use may not be justifiable for a number of character display applications.
The generation of an anti-aliased horizontally shifted font, such as an italic font, from a source font can be a computationally expensive task. However, the generation of the italic font reduces the overall font storage requirements and may thus be desirable.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a method of generating an anti-aliased second font from a first, or source, font.
It is another object of the invention to provide a method of generating an anti-aliased italic font from a standard uncompressed source font.